You’ve likely heard about the endeavor announced earlier this year by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase to collectively create a better way to provide health care for their employees. (We’ve also previously covered it on this blog.) The group announced this week that Dr. Atul Gawande has been chosen as the CEO of the new healthcare venture.

Dr. Gawande is a thought leader in the healthcare industry, and a very interesting choice for this entrepreneurial endeavor. In case you’re not familiar with who he is, here’s a short list of some of the accomplishments he’s known for:

Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s hospital

Best-selling author

Staff writer for The New Yorker

Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Professor at Harvard Medical School

Founder and Executive Director of Ariadne Labs

As of now, Gawande plans to continue with all of these endeavors concurrently with his new position. A press release from Ariadne Labs indicates that Gawande will step back from his executive director position to chairman when they find a new leader.

Gawande’s thoughts on the new position: “I am thrilled about this opportunity as it aligns perfectly with my personal mission. I have devoted my public health career to working with colleagues to build scalable solutions for better health care delivery in the U.S. and across the world. Now, I have the support of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission for their employees and families in ways that incubate better models of care for all. And I will be able to do so while maintaining my own voice and continuing to enable Ariadne Labs’ powerful and complementary work.”

According to Jeff Bezos of Amazon, “We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation. Atul embodies all three, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavor.”

These two articles by Gawande from The New Yorker: The Cost Conundrum and Letting Go, provide some insight to his thought process and inform us to the approach he may take in leading this exciting healthcare endeavor.

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